


Toxic Valentine

by ConsultingWriter



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Almost Dark!John, F/M, M/M, Not-Beta'd, Revenge, Rude!Sherlock, Socially Clueless!Sherlock, Vindictive!Sally, ao3 auction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriter/pseuds/ConsultingWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally's finally had enough of Sherlock, and she's got the perfect way to tear him down--John Watson. Or: The first time Sally met Sherlock was on Valentine's Day.</p><p>  <i>She knew he noticed her as soon as she started his way because his eyes snapped open and his head tilted down to look straight at her. A smirk crossed his lips and he lifted a hand to crook a finger at her in a ‘come hither’ fashion. Sally found herself unable to resist the devilish look in his eyes.</i></p><p>  <i>She stepped to him and pressed her soft curves flush against his harder plains and slid her arms around his neck. She stretched up and whispered “Dance with me.” In his ear as she swayed her hips with the music.</i></p><p>  <i>Long fingers gripped her and stopped her movements as a chuckled shuddered through her body “Why dance, when there are so many more exciting things to do out there?” It was positively wicked, the way he asked her that and she was powerless to do anything but follow him out the door once more.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Rerin Fangirl. Hope this is kind of what you wanted.   
> Review! Let me know what you think.

Sally Donovan watched and Sherlock—The Freak! She snarled to herself, reminding her heart that he was an unfeeling machine—stride up to the crime-scene with a middle aged, worn down, limping stranger hobbling behind him at a slower pace. Who was this little tag along and why was he following the _‘World’s Only Consulting Detective’_?

She grit her teeth and let the pair through, following them up the stairs with her eyes. Anger and (if she were honest with herself) a slight bubble of pain swirled uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach but she lifted her head and stiffened her back, comforting herself with the fact that the little tag-along wouldn’t be around for long. The Freak never kept people around for long; he was extremely talented at driving others away, after all.

She was wrong. She watched as The Freak and his….his _Limpet_ come strolling up to the crime scene, completely unfazed by the arterial spray that painted the walls and carpet like red rain. Good Heavens, the side-kick was just as fucked as The Freak.

She watched, entranced despite herself, as the curly haired—beautiful, the traitorous part of her mind whispered conspiringly—man practically danced around the room, looking for invisible clues. Quickly he darted back to the corner where the Limpet was standing calmly out of the way, talking a mile a minute, hands flying in quick gestures as he explained his ‘deductions’ to his side-kick before he even glanced at DI Lestrade—who he should be talking to, as it was only by the DI’s good graces that he was even there in the first place—she watched as the tag-along’s face lit up and a smile touched his lips as the word _“brilliant”_ fell from them. And suddenly Sally Donovan was taken back to the first time she ever met Sherlock Holmes, so many years ago—many more than anyone else even thought possible.

10 Years Prior

Sally shuffled through the mob of grinding people, weaving her way through the mass trying to avoid having beer spilt on her new outfit. She felt stunning, she _was_ stunning, and she was gunning for the tall brunette dancing by himself in the corner. He was dressed in black slacks and a tight button down, obviously way to classy for this type of party; he’d probably want to jet—hopefully he’d want to skip out with her. She was sure he’d be a great Valentine’s Day gift for her to give herself.

She slid in front of him, but didn’t reach out to touch. She wanted him to come to her.

“Sally,” she said casually, raising her voice to be heard over the music. The man cocked an eye brow but returned her greeting in time.

“Sherlock,” and damn, if his voice wasn’t didn’t slide over her like silk on skin.

“Wanna get out of here?” She asked, feeling emboldened.

He smirked and jerked his head toward the direction of the door and turned away. She followed.

Two hours later she found herself completely bewitched by the man she knew simply as ‘Sherlock’.

“….cheating on his wife with two, no… _three_ lovers, all male and all several years older.” The man finished and Sally blinked.

“That was…..” disconcerting “spectacular,” well, a small lie couldn’t hurt, right?

He gave her a brief smile, nothing more than the small upturn of the corner of his mouth. His eyes were slightly glazed and she wondered how much he’d had to drink at the party, and how much sharper he would be sober.

She reached across the table and covered his hand with her own, stroking her fingers against the top of his hand, giving him the sexiest look she could manage “This place is dead, how about you come back to my place for some coffee?”

A confused look briefly crossed his face before he glanced at his watch “I’m sorry, but it seems that I’ve run out of time, I must go.”

With that he was up and striding away, practically floating he was so smooth in his walk, and Sally? Sally was absolutely fascinated. She didn’t know, however, that that would be the last time she saw Sherlock for two years.

8 Years Prior

Another school semester, another round of house parties, and Sally wasn’t sure why she was there. Well, that was a lie. She knew exactly why she was there, what she really wasn’t sure of was why she was still obsessing over the mysterious stranger—Sherlock, she reminded herself with a breathy sigh—after two years. She just….she couldn’t help it, he was handsome, witty, and intelligent—even if his intelligence was slightly unsettling—not anything like the other guys she’d met throughout her time at university.

She scanned the crowded room; she refused to spend another Valentine’s Day evening alone.

The next breath she took caught in her throat, there he was, just as eye catching as the first time she’d seen him. He was dancing alone, eyes closed and hips swaying as if he were the only one in the room. He might as well have been, for all the attention Sally paid to anyone else.

She knew he noticed her as soon as she started his way because his eyes snapped open and his head tilted down to look straight at her. A smirk crossed his lips and he lifted a hand to crook a finger at her in a ‘come hither’ fashion. Sally found herself unable to resist the devilish look in his eyes.

She stepped to him and pressed her soft curves flush against his harder plains and slid her arms around his neck. She stretched up and whispered “Dance with me.” In his ear as she swayed her hips with the music.

Long fingers gripped her and stopped her movements as a chuckled shuddered through her body “Why dance, when there are so many more exciting things to do out there?” It was positively wicked, the way he asked her that and she was powerless to do anything but follow him out the door once more.

Hours later Sally giggled as long fingers pushed her down into the back seat of a sleek car—the stolen , expensive car—and slid up her shirt, popping the buttons on it as they moved. As a mouth attacked her own. She hooked a leg around his hips and pulled his groin flush against hers with a sly grin. With every sweep of her tongue in his mouth she could taste the whiskey and cigarettes that he’d indulged in earlier. Those long, talented fingers snapped the hook on her bra easily but slid down to dip below the waistband of her tight jeans. The sound of sirens in the distance caused the digits to freeze. Sherlock’s hot mouth pulled away from her own with a breathless whisper “Run.”

He pushed himself away from her and quickly maneuvered his way out of the back seat and vaulted out of the driver’s door, leaving it open and leaving her with her shirt opened and her bra undone, confused. As the wailing of the sirens grew louder Sally’s eyes widened and she followed Sherlock’s path, tripping clumsily as she stumbled out of the door and tried to regain her footing on the uneven gravel he’d parked on. She glanced around frantically, but Sherlock was nowhere to be seen.

The sliding crunch of a decelerating car on the loose gravel caused her to run, trying desperately to button her shirt and keep her strapless bra from falling off her body. The sounds of a car door slamming, shouting and feet on gravel followed her as she ran into the woods. Where was Sherlock? She was going to get lost in the woods if he didn’t come back—or worse, she’d be arrested.

Bumbling her way through the woods, branches tugging at her clothes and scratching at her skin, Sally seethed. She couldn’t believe that asrsehole had left her out there by herself. She her blouse closed, buttoning the last few with shaking fingers as she rolled her shoulders, trying to adjust her incorrectly spanned bra, ducking behind a thick mess of bushes, to listen for the sound of approaching feet. If she ever saw him again, Sally swore to herself, she’d rip his damned bollocks off.


	2. Chapter 2

6 Years Prior

Sargent Donovan. She grinned; Sally liked the sound of that. How could she not, with how hard she’d worked to get there.  Nothing could taint this day, not even the Devil himself.

She was wrong. Of course she was. Because for her, there was someone worse than the Devil, and he had just waltzed out of her new boss’s (DI Gregory Lestrade) office as if he owned the whole of London. Sherlock.

She grit her teeth but paid him no mind. She had worked hard to build herself back up after the night that he had given her. Left alone in the woods for hours with only thin clothing, high heels, and unsatisfied arousal to keep her company, the fear of being arrested bitter on her tongue. No she would never forget that night, that feeling, that face; nor would she forgive. There would be time for that later, she soothed herself, but right then she would pretend to never have known the mysterious man and hope that he would pick up on her attitude and do the same.

And then he turned, and looked straight through her. No recognition flickered in those bizarre— _magnificent_ , the brutally honest part of her admitted—eyes of his. Nothing. There was nothing in his eyes as they skimmed over both her and Anderson and that caused her to _burn_. Anger surged through her blood, boiled right under her skin, because how _dare_ he. Pretending was one thing, feigning introductions and never looking one another in the eye was completely different then actually forgetting. The worst night of her life and he didn’t even recognize her face? What a bloody bastard.

She swallowed her rage down and moved to talk to the DI, avoiding Sherlock—she knew exactly what he could do, and she wasn’t going to invite that on herself by attempting to exchange social pleasantries with the man.

She asks Lestrade who Sherlock is—feigning ignorance is terribly easy when being caught could expose your deepest shame—and the reply the curt tone of a man who’s patience has been pushed to the limit “Sherlock Holmes.”

5 Years Prior

It’s easy to hate Sherlock Holmes, Sally discovered fairly quickly. It really was. After a year of working with the man, she’d come to realize that he wasn’t just a bastard. He was a psychopathic necrophiliac ex-junkie (and didn’t that explain so much about their past meetings, the glazed eyes, twitchy movements, not remembering who she was).

But it’s also apparent that the bastard still has the ability to charm the unsuspecting. That’s made clear when he turns up at a crime scene—a case later known by the majority of people as ‘A Study in Pink’—with a limping man, Dr. John Watson she finds out afterwards, following him like a puppy, watching the man with _that look_. The one she recognized because it had been in her own eyes after meeting with Sherlock Holmes the first time, amazement and attraction.

So she did what she wished someone would’ve done for her; warned him away from the Consulting Detective with the truth, that he was an unfeeling freak. As the Doctor walked away from her with a blank look she shrugged her shoulders. He wouldn’t last very long. Things that interested Sherlock Holmes never did.

But she was wrong. John Watson did last, and he lasted longer than anyone could have ever thought he would. Not Just weeks or months, but an entire year had almost passed, and in that time he had not only shattered their expectations—and ruined the betting pool between the officers multiple times—but he also turned the Consulting Detective into London’s greatest crime fighter. It was almost like Cinderella, when she thought about it, from a friendless freak to England’s Superman all with the help of his Fairy God-Doctor.

 

_It turned out that Sherlock Holmes was exactly like Cinderella, because for all the shining moments he’d had, he couldn’t outrun the clock striking midnight. And his clock did strike midnight, in the form of a man named James Moriarty—who she was ashamed to find out was real, after everything was all said and done with—and a fall from a building._

4 Years Prior

Sally clutched the glass in her hand tightly and stared down into the amber liquid that it cradled. He was gone, and she didn’t feel a bloody fucking thing that she thought she should be feeling. She didn’t feel victorious for proving everyone right, or vindicated for knowing all along whom he really was. She didn’t even feel satisfied that she’d finally gotten some form of revenge in the way that he’d been disgraced in the Yard, the way she had been that night. No, she didn’t feel any of those things. Instead she felt an ache for John Watson and Lestrade. She also felt a deep seated, hidden shame that she’d been so driven to destroy a man that she had; she had actually ruined someone’s life.  Doctor Watson’s face flashed through her mind, and the self-disgust that was stirring in her belly grew. She’d ruined two people’s lives.

She lifted the glass from the bar it had been sitting on and lifted it to her lips. It was going to be a long night.

She froze when a she saw a familiar figure sit at the bar beside her. She really hoped he wasn’t here to start anything (though she would deserve it if he did).

“I don’t blame you, you know, for what happened.” John Watson said, staring off into space “Well, actually, I do. A bit. But I know why you would think that he’s a terrible person, or a sociopath, or whatever,” he turned sad eyes to look at her, and Sally felt like he could see every sin she’d ever committed.

“And I’ll admit it—hell, I’ll be the first to admit it—Sherlock wasn’t a good person most of the time, not really, so I understand why you thought he was a fraud,”

That sentence made Sally feel sick, because she knew—she knew Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a fake or a fraud, but she had wanted to one up him, had wanted her revenge, so badly that she had lied and manipulated people to tarnish his name.

“But he wasn’t,” John continued to say, driving the knife deeper into her gut and twisting it all the while with his words “I know he wasn’t,” he stopped, looking around the bar—looking anywhere but at her—before continuing “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he admitted and took a drink of his own beer “I guess it’s because I believe in him, I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

That sentence would haunt her for the next two and a half years.

Now

And here they were now. Years after she’d first met him, after he rose and fell from “greatness” and after he stormed his way back into the lives of Doctor Watson and Gregory Lestrade like he was entitled to be there, the center of their chaotic worlds.

He was ruining them. He had ruined them. Perhaps that was why Sally wasn’t going to feel bad about her new plan of action, one that—if all went according to plan—would end with her having a stable boyfriend with the bonus of seeing Sherlock Holmes brought to his knees. Maybe even literally.

She was going to bag herself a Watson. One John H. Watson, to be precise.  After all, he was quite handsome (and charming and polite) when he wasn’t following The Freak around like a puppy.


End file.
